Mean Machine (film)


Mean Machine is a 2001 British sports comedy film directed by Barry Skolnick and starring former footballer Vinnie Jones. The film is an adaptation of the 1974 American film The Longest Yard, featuring association football rather than American football. It also reunites most of the cast from executive producer Guy Ritchie's prior blockbusters Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch.

Plot

Danny "The Mean Machine" Meehan is a retired footballer and former captain of England, who was banned from football for life for fixing an unspecified match they played against Germany. In the present day, after a long drinking session, he drives recklessly to a local bar, where he is chased by police. Inside the bar, when asked to take a breathalyser test, he assaults two police officers and is arrested; he is later convicted and sentenced to three years in Longmarsh prison.
Once inside, his status as a celebrity immediately runs him foul of the guards, and he is unfairly beaten by the prison guards soon after arrival for "misbehaving". After being shown around the prison, Meehan is told to visit the prison governor's office, who tells Danny that he pulled strings to make sure he served his sentence in Longmarsh, wanting him to work as the head coach of the prison wardens' football team. Not wanting to make enemies with the other inmates, Meehan declines, and instead suggests the guards allow him to train a team made up of other convicts, who will take on the wardens in a practice match to gear them up for the new season.
Shortly after, Meehan is met with an unwelcome reception his cellmates, Raj, Jerome and Trojan, who immediately express their dislike for him. Outside, Danny meets and befriends an elderly convict, Doc, who teaches him prison lore. While cleaning the yards with Doc, Meehan is introduced to Sykes, a gangster and one of the most respected inmates in the prison. Sykes also shows resentment towards Meehan, revealing he lost a large amount of money betting on the England game he had fixed. Later in the prison cafeteria, Meehan makes another ally, meeting the prison's friendly contraband dealer "Massive". Massive tells a somewhat apprehensive Danny he could get him anything he wanted smuggled into the prison, and offers himself as his right hand man.
The next day, Meehan is sent to solitary confinement after getting into a fight in the cafeteria. While Danny is locked in his cell, Massive, proving his skills as a contraband dealer, gifts him a packet of mints through his cell door. After his release back into general population, Danny and Massive begin the recruitment process for his team, but struggle, as many of the inmates are apprehensive to join due to both Sykes' influence over the prison and their disdain for Meehan as a cheat. As Danny tries and fails to form a team, Massive is playing football in a prison hallway, when a racist guard approaches him and attacks him as the other inmates watch in anger. Meehan charges at the guard and saves Massive from further beating, earning the respect of many of the other inmates for doing so. This leads to him being sent to solitary again. Massive, thankful for Danny's help, this time gifts him a tennis ball to pass the time with.
When Danny is released from solitary again, he is greeted by Raj and Trojan who have recruited a team of players and is occupied with the task of training up his team of cons, including a dangerous maximum-security inmate named "The Monk". Meanwhile, the warden gets himself into trouble with "Barry the Bookie," an unlicensed bookmaker who was recommended to him by Sykes. After being threatened on the phone by Barry, the warden decides to try to make back the money he owes by betting on the prison guards' team.
As Danny begins to earn the trust and respect of his fellow inmates and they continue to improve as a football team, a shifty inmate named Nitro accuses him of being a snitch, which leads to two other inmates and associates of Sykes attacking Danny in the showers. As they threaten to cut his eyes out, they are caught by the guards who ask what happened, but Meehan refuses to tell, which earns him the respect of both Sykes' men and Sykes himself. The next day, Sykes and his associates offer to help the team, under the condition that Danny beats one of them in a fight. The fight takes place later that night, and Danny wins by knocking out Sykes' henchman. Sykes and his associates join, and Sykes tells Danny all is forgiven if his team wins, which would allow Sykes to make back the money he lost on the England match.
Frustrated that his plan to have Danny taken out didn't work, Nitro, a bomb expert, offers to take Meehan out in exchange for a transfer to a lower security prison which one of the guards, Mr. Ratchett agrees to. Nitro crafts a bomb in his cell and places it in Danny's locker while he's not around.
With almost all of the inmates on board and the game approaching, Danny and the rest of the team are going over tactics in one of the cells, when he realises he has left a tape containing footage of the guards playing last year in his locker. Doc offers to go and get it, and as he leaves, Jerome asks Danny why he fixed the England match. Danny reveals he was heavily in debt at the time, and was blackmailed into fixing the game with the promise of enough money to pay off his debt if he threw the game, or the threat of being crippled for life if he didn't. As Danny is telling the other inmates, Doc arrives at the cell and is killed by the bomb. Nitro is subsequently sent to another facility, but not to the minimum-security prison he was promised – he is sent to a mental facility where Ratchett tells him he will be heavily sedated all the time.
The match commences shortly after Doc's death. Before the game begins, Sykes gives the team one last gift from Doc - custom football kits with the name "Mean Machine" printed on all of them. At half time, the inmates' team is winning 1–0, and things are going well until the governor, fearing what will happen if he loses a second bet, attempts to blackmail Meehan, accusing him of accessory to Doc's murder and threatening to sentence him to 20 years unless he throws the match. At first he puts his own interests before that of the team's, deliberately playing poorly and faking injury to be taken off the pitch. As the final moments of the game tick down, he redeems himself, bravely using a square-ball to fellow inmate 'Billy the Limpet' to win the game for the cons. Afterward, the Captain of the Guards, Mr. Burton, refuses to co-operate with the governor's attempts to get revenge on Danny, instead congratulating him on the win. The governor's vehicle explodes, and Sykes informs him that he, and Barry the Bookie, will retaliate if he tries anything. A victorious Danny and Massive walk triumphantly across the pitch.

Cast

The film also included a number of actors who had formerly played professional football, including three players who were teammates with the film's star, Vinnie Jones, at different times in their careers: Charlie Hartfield played with Jones for Sheffield United F.C., while Paul Fishenden and Brian Gayle both played with Jones for Wimbledon F.C.. In addition, Nevin Saroya was once a Brentford F.C. youth team player. Ryan Giggs, then an active player with Manchester United F.C. and the Wales national football team, appears briefly as a warden.

Production

Producer Matthew Vaughan, while looking for a film vehicle to highlight ex-soccer star Vinnie Jones, came across director Robert Aldrich's 1974 American football comedy The Longest Yard. Jones, who was known for rough play and off-field rowdiness, seemed a natural for the lead role.
Mean Machine was filmed from April to June 2001. Most of the prison scenes were filmed at HM Prison Oxford, and the match was filmed at The Warren, the former home ground of Yeading. The Warren is located in Hayes.

Release and reception

Mean Machine was released in United Kingdom theaters on 28 December 2001 and according to the box office database website Box Office Mojo, grossed $2,288,365 during its opening weekend with a total domestic gross of $6,288,153. The film was released in the United States on 22 February 2002 with total gross receipts in the amount of $92,770. Total foreign gross was $929,283.
Reception of the film was mixed to negative, according to Rotten Tomatoes, which gave the film a 34% score. Aggregate website Metacritic gave the film a Metascore of 45, indicating average or mixed reviews, and a user score of 7.7 indicating positive audience response. A major criticism of the film was that it was unintentionally funny and led to "prison cliches".
Jamie Russell of the BBC wrote, "t keeps its tongue welded firmly in its cheek. The scriptwriters have enough sense to replay every funny moment from the original, while also adding a couple of innovations of their own. The final soccer game is definitely the high point of the proceedings, if only because it lets the star do what he does best - play some very dirty football."
While A.O. Scott of the New York Times wrote, "Reviewing The Longest Yard in The New York Times 28 years ago, Nora Sayre objected to its clumsiness and violence, but admitted to being entertained by the football sequences. Watching this remake, I had the opposite response: the story was moderately engaging and moved swiftly, but the long soccer match at the end bored me silly. Perhaps this is just American chauvinism, or perhaps that kind of football is inherently less cinematic than ours. It's certainly no less brutal."